Beauty Reviews, Tutorials, Tips & Tricks

Covergirl Custom Blend Foundation: Buck Off or Buy

When I saw that Covergirl would custom make you a foundation that was an exact match to your skin tone, I was ecstatic! I have been DYING to try the Lancome custom foundation but they don’t have it in Texas yet.

This foundation retails for $25 and ships for free through the app. It’s only available through the end of March. I’ll start by walking you through the process.

First, you download the Covergirl Custom Blend app on your phone. When you open the app you get an opening video advertising the product.

It walks you through how it works and then shows you the steps you’ll go through before you can get started.

You fill out your basic information.

It then wants to know a little about your skin color and your ethnicity.

Finally, it has you take a video of your face while you spin in a half circle. It says to make sure that you do it in even indoor lighting. I ended up doing it in half indoor and half outdoor. My indoor lighting did not accurately showcase my skin color.

It then gives you the option between choosing the match foundation (Photo 2) and the enhance foundation (Photo 3). I ended up choosing the match because the enhance did not look like it would match me at all.

You now get your foundation numbers. What they don’t tell you at the time on the app is what those numbers mean. When you receive your box in the mail, they do send a card that explains the numbers. You aren’t able to adjust the numbers at all. You have to use what they give you.

Now here’s where it gets weird. I watch Thataylaa on YouTube and I highly recommend checking her out. She ended up getting the same numbers that I did even though her skin is a shade lighter than mine. She also mentioned that some of her subscribers who know they are a couple shades darker than her also got the same numbers. It makes you wonder how “custom” it really is. I ordered it on February 25th and it arrived on March 3rd. That is a fairly quick turnaround for something that is supposed to be custom.

The final step is to design your own label. You can pick the color of your label and what you want to call your shade.

Once it came in the mail, this is what the box looks like and what comes in it.

The bottle has a nice pump and I really liked the look of the label and it having my numbers on the back.

Let’s now move on to what really matters…did they get my shade right? The answer to that question would be no.

Indoor Lighting

Outdoor Lighting

It is hard to tell in photos since I am just working with my iPhone camera but it is way too pink for me. I can understand why this happened. I have a lot of redness in my skin and the camera captured it making a foundation that ran a little pink. I am now wondering what would have happened if I would have chose “enhance” instead of match”.

The actual formula was surprisingly really nice. It was a solid medium coverage that covered my redness but still let my freckles show through. It looked very nice and smooth of my skin and dried down, I didn’t even set it. I would normally do a wear test for you but since it is obvious that the app can’t properly detect your skin color I will go ahead tell you that this is a…

I am going to try and mix it with my COVER FX Custom Cover Drops and other foundations to see if I can make it work.

Update: I decided to try it in different lighting and different options to see what it came up with. I also used the Dr. Jart Cicapair Tiger Grass Color Correcting Treatment. I was hoping if I neutralized the redness I could get a better match.

Color Purchased: Color (42) Intensity (21) Under Tone (36)

Indoor Lighting Enhance: Color (41) Intensity (25) Under Tone (40)

Indoor Lighting Match: Color (41) Intensity (23) Under Tone (37)

Outdoor Lighting Enhance: Color (42) Intensity (21) Under Tone (40)

Outdoor Lighting Match: Color (42) Intensity (21) Under Tone (36)

The higher the color number is the lighter the shade and the lower the under tone number is the more pink it will be. So based upon that it looks like the better match for me would be the Outdoor Lighting – enhanced option. I am trying to decide if I want to spend another $25 to see if I can get this to work. If I do, I will update the blog post.

Update 2: You have to redo the whole process anytime you want to get new numbers. I tried to get my “Outdoor Lighting Enhanced” numbers again right away and was not able to do so. Therefore, I won’t be purchasing another bottle. It is just not reliable enough.